Japanese

I am now taking up the task again of resuming my Japanese studies, which are done purely on my own time, but which I am willing to put a lot of devotion to.

I have recently come across a site that sparked and refueled my interests again: All Japanese All The Time. The site’s author, Khatzumoto, managed to learn fluent Japanese in 18 months from scratch, without much previous experience, without classes, and subsequently score an interview in Japan as a software engineer.

There is an abundant amount of information on that site, and for those who don’t feel well reading so much information at a time, I will be trying to summarize the key points here.

I. Overview

The above is Khatzumoto’s overview diagram/flow chart of how he does his Japanese studying.

CORE PRINCIPLES

– to properly learn Japanese, you have to spend as much time as you can “in” Japanese; this includes things such as the shows you watch, the things you read, the music you listen to, the people you talk to, the sites you visit, and as far as to your brain’s internal monologue; this is the single most important aspect, and in fact takes on what an infant does: total immersion to absorb a new language

– SRS: spaced repetition system; what this is is a devised method of memorizing large quantities of information, such as vocabulary, using a flash card system, and making you review them at certain intervals of time so you will never forget them; this is used with a program that does all the organizations for you, read below to find out more

– for all this to seem fun, you have to enjoy what you’re doing. Look for songs and Anime you like, take pride in learning a new language. Go from there.

IMPORTANT THINGS ABOUT AJATT

– learn the 2046 general use kanji from Remember the Kanji, Part I, by James Heisig; input the stuff you learn into your SRS routine

– important: don’t bother learning so much grammar (grammar only works after you’ve spent enough time in the language, and does not work well if you learn it before you actually spend time in the language); speaking from MY own experience, I have spent a lot of time in verb conjugations, particles, and such, but it is hard to properly interpret a sentence, since I have not read much Japanese to get the feel of the parts of speech, etc… so NO GRAMMAR… maybe an occasional check if you’re confused… a good reference is GuidetoJapanese.org

– try something like 15-20 Kanji a day at least (try to learn them under 6 months)

– memorize all the hiragana and katakana and learn to read them fluently (being able to do this benefits greatly, trust me); you don’t have to be able to write them all out, as I have forgotten half my katakana, but I can definitely read anything you throw at me. Don’t depend romanji (Japanese in the form of English alphabets)

learn the sentence as a whole instead of the individual words, and understand them instead of translating them

do not try to learn so much grammar rules to understand the sentence, it is unnecessary, and unpractical

– don’t get into the thinking that Japanese is a super hard language, because its not like English is much easier but just as confusing – make the process of learning it fun

– don’t sweat too much if you aren’t understanding the material you are working with (news, dramas, manga, anime, etc.) it will eventually make sense with enough perserverance

– practice is mandatory… not only in Japanese, but in whatever you do; take this quote:

In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice…It’s the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance.

Yep, 10,000 hours.

[Practice] regularly, not sporadically. Occasional practice does not work.

Just like the principles of SRS.

And last but not least…

…talent has little or nothing to do with greatness…It’s nice to believe that if you find the field where you’re naturally gifted, you’ll be great from day one, but it doesn’t happen. There’s no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.

– don’t take long breaks from the language, it will break your momentum and set you back to where you were before, if not further back; the important point is that Japanese has to remain the dominating “activity” that you commit to everyday

– Khatzumoto’s analogy: learning a language is like boiling water – if you keep turning the fire off, it will never boil (fluency will never be reached); once you reach fluency however, you can input less “thermal energy” to keep it at where it is at… but before that, the process must not stop

– if you find yourself not doing enough practice everyday, try timeboxing – it is a great organizational method

– be ready to change your plans to suit your own personal needs, but the ultimate goal is to master the language

– the one more rule: remember how easy it is to say “just one more game” or “just 10 more minutes” or “just one more level” when you were addicted to some game? Why not apply to Japanese too? “Just one more Kanji” or “just one more SRS rep” would work quite nicely with your goals

– not every living second has to be spend in actively learning or memorizing Japanese – at most a couple of hours is okay. You can spend the other time just passively listening to it or absorbing it, no need to actually engage in the language

– it might be rather discouraging to know that you learned one word, yet there are thousands of vocabulary and Kanji out there, for which you have no knowledge of… but on the bright side, just get down to work, stop thinking about how much you don’t know but how much you know instead, and soon it will gradually become easier and easier for you to learn as your base knowledge knows more, and the amount of unknowns decreases (for now, you’ll have to admit you suck)

– again, whatever you do, look for a Japanese version of it (movies, books, anime, and the list goes on). Believe that you only know one language, and that is Japanese… and stop thinking about your own inferiority, just believe you are fluent (or close to fluent)

Here are some examples of environment changes you can take to make your environment Japanese:

Some of these sound rather extreme, but more or less gives you an idea of what you need to do to actually become fluent in your desired amount of time.

– if you feel that you lack any sort of fluency after a while of studying, try looking up a new language – listen to it, see how much you understand. I won’t be amazed if you feel that compared to this new language, you feel that you actually understand at least a bit of Japanese

Now for a more in-depth look into some of the aspects:

SRS

– spaced repetition system: a method to help you remember everything as long you review regularly and make good use of the tool; not only does it work well with Japanese, it works with any other form of rote memorization, because it constantly reviews what you’ve learned so that you won’t forget it

– SRS is conducted with flash cards, and you are given a question or some word and you have to see if you remember the meaning or answer – you don’t actually answer it, but you rate yourself from 0-5 on how well you knew the answer; depending on this answer, the flash card will reappear based on how easy you thought the question was

– recommended SRS programs are Anki, Khatzumemo, or Mnemosync

KANA, KANJI

– Khatzumoto recommends learning all the Kanji from the book Remember the Kanji vol. 1 by James Heisig first – the writing and recognizing the character itself, not the pronounciations

– Kana (Hiragana, Katakana) can be learned after, but I find it no harm to memorize it immediately – learn how to read it, so that you can start skimming through some Japanese instead of relying on Romanji

– if you are born Chinese like me, you can afford to skip most of the Kanji, as you might know a lot of them already and what they mean. It would still be good review to see what you might not know

SENTENCES

– Input > Output: it has been proved that input of a language (reading, listening) is more important than output (speaking, writing), simply because a normal person usually reads, listens, and absorbs information in the language a lot more than he is writing and communicating. With enough input, you can easily output it back out; it is also more important to understand others more than to make yourself understood

– get to learn around 10,000 sentences – this may seem like a lot, but you don’t have to memorize them; just be sure to be able to do the following:

be able to read the sentence without the help of furigana

know the meaning, as well as every word in the sentence

be able to write it out at will

– as you might have guessed, all these sentences go into your SRS

– by seeing and understanding a lot of sentences, you get much more “feel” for the language, as well as you will passively know when to use what kind of readings for the Kanji

– this is Khatzumoto’s example of how to enter sentences into SRS:

QUESTION (FRONT):

これは例文です。

ANSWER (BACK):

これ は（わ） れい・ぶん です。

This [as for] example-sentence is. (PL3)

*This is an example sentence.

QUESTION (FRONT):

お前は何者だ？

ANSWER (BACK):

お・まえ は（わ） なに・もの だ

おまえ【御前】同等または､目下の相手をゾンザイに､また親愛の情を込めて呼ぶ語｡

現代では､多く､男が使う｡対等の親しい関係では｢おれ｣に対し｢お前｣と言う｡

なにもの【何者】姓名･身分などの分からない者を指していう語｡どういう人｡だれ｡何人(ﾅﾆﾋﾞﾄ)｡｢昨日の君の相手は何者かね｣。

めした【目下】地位または年齢が自分より下であること｡また､その人｡

– just like the example above, you might want to eventually resort to Japanese answers only, to help yourself improve and adapt faster to the language

– more examples of Khatzumoto’s newly deployed method of sentence-SRS-ing

QUESTION (FRONT):

くさなぎ もとこ

しんちょう：ひゃくろくじゅうはち せんち

こうあん きゅう か の じっしつてき りーだー。

ANSWER (BACK):

草薙素子

身長：168糎

公安９課の実質的リーダー。

QUESTION (FRONT):

中山廣幸

ANSWER (BACK):

なかやま ひろゆき

Instead of entering the original written form of the sentence, you can enter the hiragana form, and see if you know how to read/write it back out.

The second example is for names, as there are many different ways to write a name of a given pronounciation.

– other ways: have the front side of the flashcard containing an audio of the sentence, then proceed to repeat the sentence out loud yourself and write it out

– where to get the sentences from?

a) dictionaries (I use Kanji Sonomama for DS, you can write Kanji or Kana in and it gives you detailed explainations in both languages and examples and all that… and even better is it also contains Chinese to Japanese, and more… check it out yourself, totally worth buying a DS (and flashcart) for, compared to those electronic dictionaries which are twice the price), or http://www.alc.co.jp and any other online dictionary site with sample sentences

– only put the sentences you are interested into your SRS. If you can withstand boredom to an extent, then you should put in all the sentences that seem important and might come up frequently; otherwise, no, you don’t have to put in everything you see (though if you do and then crunch it all down, then you’ll get fluent faster)

– try to keep your sentences short and simple

– try looking up words you already know in a Japanese-Japanese dictionary

My own advice

Start out with a textbook, or maybe a service like JapanesePod101 for a week or two. Know the basics. Watashi, Anata, Sumimasen, Arigatou Gozaimasu, etc.

The thing about textbooks is they make you feel like you’re going to school. That is no good, because its thick and heavy, makes you sleepy, makes things boring. And on top of that, Kanji is never introduced properly, so you have to relearn all your Kanji later. There are also many misunderstandings created, such as romanizing “tou” as “too.”
Some very good things to know early on:

When you watch Anime or whatever, there will be lots of slang, shortened words, stuff like “nai” changed into “nee”. This all takes knowledge buildup, so don’t worry, take your time.

Do NOT force yourself too hard. Slow, CONSISTENT improvement. Don’t learn 50 words a day or something. I couldn’t keep that up for more than one day. If you can, then all the power to you. Set upkeepable goals for your own sanity.

Last but not least, nothing replaces the original stuff posted on AJATT. Please take your time to read it if you’re serious. Do the man a favour and buy his starter sentence pack. He preaches things that are worth more than 20, 30 bucks to you. He is saving you time, showing you a new way to learn. That, my friends, transcends money and time😀.

PLEASE SOME READ THIS ok i am learning kanji right now using remember the kanji and i was wonder what do i do in the mean time. Yes i am in an immerse environment and listening to japanese music and watching japanese videos and some anime. I am guess that it will take me 3 months to complete this book but in the mean time what do i do about learn japanese. I know that i am being confusing but right now i am only understand reading what about understand when some one is speaking please help me

I think it helps on some level to purchase or download a textbook.
Genki is used by Universities, but it is quite lengthy. It might bore you out if you aren’t motivated enough. I also have Japanese for Everyone, which DannyChoo.com also used, and I actually got bored by the 10th lesson as well, but it gave me enough starting ground.

If you don’t mind paying a little, go to JapanesePod101.com. Their lessons are helpful, you can pay one month and download as many as you can. Lessons are short, helpful conversations that help you with basic words and sentences, and comes with Lesson PDFs. I learned a LOT of my basic Japanese using the previous two ways.

Don’t be mistaken, I am not good at Japanese at all (listening abilities are crap, I guess I can read a little since I can read Chinese fluently + knowing a bit of Japanese; I have never spoken in daily life more than simple sentences either), I’m just trying to give a shorter summary of what is featured on AJATT. Actually I don’t think I summarize that well either, because sometimes there are so many important points. You’ll just have to immerse yourself in stuff you enjoy, so it seems fun. Most importantly, stay consistent. I’ve stopped my SRS for weeks at times due to lack of motivation. As long as you can do a little everyday, you’re set.